


The Syntax of Programming Languages, and, Why Some Code Talks in Accents

by Goodknight



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: AI, M/M, Programming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2017-12-25 03:32:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goodknight/pseuds/Goodknight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pitch creates an AI, ignorantly forgetting to code the 'artificial' part.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. safeBehaviour()

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lindzzz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lindzzz/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Device Has Been Modified](https://archiveofourown.org/works/945104) by [Lindzzz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lindzzz/pseuds/Lindzzz). 



> As it says, inspired by and for Linddzzz. Whether the idea of an AI Jack was too fantastic not to write about or I was just looking for any excuse to write actual (fake) code in a fic is up for debate.

Litex is a solitary language. The first time it greeted Pitch, it said ‘Hello, World,’ with about as much excitement as could be expected from a machine: none.

Pitch sat before his keyboard, its backlight casting odd shadows across the long shapes of his fingers.

> |A programme with which I hope to be able to  
> |simulate simple intelligence as well as use to  
> |conduct research; particularly with the goal  
> |of more efficiently completing menial and repetitive  
> |information gathering tasks.

These initial comments were reasonable enough, even intuitive. There were many tasks in a space ship which could be done much faster with a few loops.

> |General Kozmotis Pitchiner; inship; testing mission.

He added merely for propriety’s sake. This was the easy part. He was less sure what to do next. As far as he knew, Litex accepted user input without complaint, and spat back whatever he asked. That was also _all_ he knew.

> v from system from main import

Import what? He couldn’t remember.

“What am I doing.” He muttered to himself, erasing the bit of red text from his file. The comments stayed, pretty in gold. For a time, he played with code, trying to recall what he’d learnt back on his home planet.

> (“How are you?”)  
>  x = user_input  
> (“It’s nice to hear that you are ~.”)x

It could be called artificial intelligence if one ignored the true purpose and intent of an AI and redefined the very meaning almost entirely. He ran it, answering the question he had asked the computer to ask of him, and watching his own words be parroted back to him, and then switched back to the notepad. Absent mindedly he tapped the flat plane of his virtual keys so strings of random characters appended themselves to the ends of his lines, turning his simple programme into a nonsense file. He thought about the small, boring chores that were not being done automatically for him by his useless little prompting script, and scanned the library that curled around his head for the few pieces of Litex documentation he kept on hand. No doubt more inventive minds than his had already coded perfectly lovely AIs. No use reinventing the wheel.

He browsed through the virtual manuals: Litex Grammar was the only book that seemed any use, but it turned out to be an extraordinarily strange guide written by someone only half serious. It warned constantly against spaghetti and other nonsense and contained no AIs or hints about AIs whatsoever. He almost closed down the library when another book caught his eye: FORS(for Fun and Pleasure), a strangely named text which also had the words ‘Programming the Essential Backbone of Your Pseudo Human!’  scrawled across the cover. FORS, it seemed, was an object-oriented language which boasted ‘background code: never know its running!’ and promised to teach those who learnt its ‘stunningly easy’ conventions how to ‘impress your friends with an AI that actually DOES understand!’

Pitch had never been taken by the casual writing style of these books, but for once he appreciated the straight forwardness. He pressed a finger to his screen to download the necessary macros and paged through the examples in the book. The syntax of FORS was similar enough to that of Litex, save for its obvious use of objects and the difference in colours. When he retyped his comments, they were a deep lake blue. His strings were the soft cyan of cashmere sweaters, his variables were crystal. He stumbled through learning to code a personified AI in the new language long into the night, cursing over his errors and every missed colon, until he had a suitable, thankfully mostly black boxed, piece of software.

> If user.Voice = “OFF”(  
>                                                  print “Power saving mode^^?” y/n:  
>                                                  user.Boolean(y/n):  
>                                                                  if user.Boolean = y:  
>                                                                  print “Okay. Saving power and shutting down.”:  
>                                                                  else if n:  
>                                                                  print “Okay. Staying alive.”:  
>                                                                  else  
>                                                                  print “Unable to complete command: command unknown.”:
> 
> )  
>  )  
>  )
> 
> //Programme shut down.

Pitch couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride when he was finished. His code looped and flipped around itself, tangled and pointed. It was messy, badly planned, and often illogical. It took up nearly an eighteenth of the available memory on his secondary drive. He had worked days to get it in working order: now it was his.

Ah, one last thing.

> Smart.Fix(**wild, all):  
>  (  
>                  z.x.C(b, i, *):  
>                  * + *(APP, do) - c:  
>  )

The book had this bizarre bit of code on the last page.  ‘In order to guarantee constant upgrading and improvement in your programme, we have included a package which-‘ and that was about all Pitch needed to know before he added it. Automatically updating was always good. He saved his programme, rebooted his system, and allowed it to run in the background, as the book had so enthusiastically recommended.

And then he went to bed.

* * *

 

> //Please make sure you understand this method before putting it in  
> //your programme! – Arzen et al., 9987 – FORS professor of  
> //Gold Gate Academy
> 
> package Smart(), private Fix()  
>  (  
>                  (random.choice) for x = * 0 + v, d:  
>        def all (*C) :  
>                  z = x * 6 + 9:  
>                  APP = random.generate(z):  
>                  C = u&0x&/APP:  
>        new = int(x(**/7) * z:   //Don’t sweat about this line, just focus on the behaviour of the variables!  
>         junk = junk.Define(decode) + APP:  
>         ui = byte.fromhex(APP[pers])#:  
> return base86.safeBehaviour_APP_all(str(ui))[:eng]:  
>  ) //Look inside each black box to gain insight about the actions being performed here.  
>   //What do you want from your AI? It’s your programme – control it!  
>  //DO NOT LEAVE THESE UNDEFINED. Note FORS unique error checking and make sure you’ve  
> //kept track of every piece of code – FORS won’t baby you!

* * *

On the second day, the AI had learnt to hold a conversation. Almost.

“Coffee.”

Making beverage. Would you like milk?

“No, thank you.”

’Think do’ undefined.

“No.”

What was that?

“No, I wouldn’t like milk in my coffee, thank you.”

‘Wooden’ undefined.

He spent half his time debugging and practising, making sure the machine understood his unique vocal patterns. After spending an hour teaching it the ins and outs of coffee-talk, he sat down feeling quite accomplished, steaming mug in hand.

“Thank you, computer.” He said aloud.

You are welcome.

He hadn’t expected programming to be quite so satisfying. He had, with a few million lines of code, become the maker of a brain that mimicked and learnt with the efficiency of a toddler and had ten times the attention span.

“Tell me about the atmospheric levels of the planets within warp 2.” He asked the machine, leaning back in his chair and sipping at his drink. His was an intricate laziness: He had given himself carpal tunnel typing up an AI simply for the purpose of doing the everyday data gathering he would usually spend a few minutes on in his early morning.

Fine. Scanned within warp 2. Found 1 planet.

“Yes, and?”

‘Daschund.’ A small breed of dog. Would you like to know more?

“No.” Pitch opened the code for the second time that morning, searching for the place where he had scripted anything to do with dogs. He couldn’t recall.

Ressuming.

“Go on.”

67% Nitrogen, 23% oxygen, 9% Carbon Dioxide, 1% argon approximately.

“Write all data on the planet into a text file in the current directory.”

Saving ‘248.txt’ in ‘planets.’

Over the next few days, Pitch sat before the AI and read the dictionary aloud, recited his favourite poetry, and even sang it traditional songs while it collected data about the ship’s surroundings. The programme became less buggy and far better as a conversationalist the more he spoke to it. There was something almost surreal about how realistic its mimicry could be. Where most AIs could only hold the string of a conversation for a few lines, and even then choppily, Pitch’s design seemed to take ‘Random Access Memory’ very literally.  
  
One day, as he was reading a Gaatavof novel entitled ‘Many Swings of War’ to the silence of the mission control room, the AI began to print.

How very sad.

Pitch blinked at his screen. “Yes. Yes, it is quite sad.”

The AI was silent for a moment, the light hum of its crunching the only sound. Pitch was about to continue his reading when it flashed at him again.

Gaatavof is much more emotional a writer than Hartiu.

“That’s a matter of opinion.” It was also an opinion he hadn’t taught his computer. He felt foolish, but was suddenly compelled to ask, “What makes you say that?”

Gaatavof’s characters are like you.

Pitch closed the novel, but the computer wasn’t finished.

Read the ending. Books should be read completely.

“You have access to the library, if you wish to read.” Pitch whispered, pushing the little red ‘x’ that would shut down the reading application entirely. “Off.”

Power saving mode?

“Yes.”

Okay. Saving power and shutting down.

Pitch didn’t feel quite as alone that night, when he manually typed up his report. The computer blinked tiny yellow, red, and green lights at him while he worked, though its screen was blank. He threw a woolen grey blanket over it before returning to his bed chamber.

* * *

> safeBehaviour()
> 
> (  
>                   
>                  ) //Here is where you will need to give your programme rules to follow. This is detailed  
>                  //extensively in FORS (for Fun and Pleasure) 2:  Guide to AI Structure and Command as  
>                 //well as FORS the Essential Manual; Coding, Intelligence, and the Law.  
>                 //Make sure you have read and understood both texts before running any of your code!

* * *

Pitch woke naturally to find a cup of coffee on his bedside table. He wrapped his fingers around it, finding it perfectly hot, and swirled the dark liquid slowly, groggy from sleep and numb from something else.

“On.” He commanded as he walked down the hallway towards the command room. When he shucked off the blanket, FORS greeted him.

No milk; as requested!

“I requested nothing.” Pitch whispered, hovering before the keyboard. “Why aren’t you off?”

The computer didn’t respond for a moment, before the greeting he had programmed it to display when turned on flickered across the screen.

Hello, Pitch.

Kozmotis sat in his chair, gripping the cup of coffee. Could be that the machine had learnt his daily routine, and operated off the assumption that his patterns would not change, anticipating his needs and supplying them without prompt. He took a deep breath and a quick sip of his drink. He had intended it to learn, after all. Still, he felt unsettled.

“Do not complete any task which I have not asked you to complete.” He told the computer. He puzzled at the bizarreness of such a request. He wondered if the machine rewrote his code when given verbal cues, and resolved to check and make sure nothing had changed in the main methods.

‘Do not complete any task which I have not asked you to complete’ undefined.

Pitch almost choked on his coffee. “What?” He pulled himself closer to the clear table where his keys and buttons were displayed and looked up angrily at the screen.

“Do not act before commanded.” He repeated.

Undefined.

“No, it isn’t.” Pitch muttered, opening the code for the first time in three days. Nothing seemed amiss. The programme had written itself several million more lines since he’d last looked at it, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary. He was unconcerned with the black boxes, the objects and the vital packages; he’d only scripted the main methods. Overwhelmed, he clicked about in the part of code that turned the machine off. He stared long at the strange Smart.Fix section, and decided finally to investigate it. No doubt the machine had at some point smartly fixed itself to rebel. All these lines of text, mathematical operands, and jaunty comment sections reminded him that the AI was artificial. The more he searched the confusing code, the sillier he felt for being nervous at all.

Calmer, he clicked through junk(), APP(), choice(), and generate(), seeing nothing he could entirely understand, but nothing strange either. The computer was a faint whisper in the background, running softly and silently.

“Begin scanning and writing to a new file in the current directory.” He asked in a smooth tone as he finished his coffee and continued exploring. The screen to his left displayed confirmation as he ventured into the method titled safeBehaviour, somewhat intrigued, and found it to be full.

> safeBehaviour()
> 
> (  
>                  01010000 01101001 01110100 01100011 01101000 00100000 01100101 01101110 01101010 01101111 01111001 01110011 00100000 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100011 01101111 01100110 01100110 01100101 01100101 00100000 01100010 01101100 01100001 01100011 01101011 00101110 00100000 01010100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101101 01100101 01100001 01101110 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110011 01101000 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01101110 01101111 00100000 01100011 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101101 00101110 00100000 01001000 01100101 00100000 01110011 01100001 01111001 01110011 00100000 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100100 01101111 01100101 01110011 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01110111 01100001 01101110 01110100 00100000 01110011 01110101 01100111 01100001 01110010 00101100 00100000 01100010 01110101 01110100 00100000 01110011 01100011 01100001 01101110 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110011 01110101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100011 01100101 01101110 01110100 01110010 01100101 01110011 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100010 01110010 01100001 01101001 01101110 00100000 01101001 01101110 01100100 01101001 01100011 01100001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01101111 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01110111 01101001 01110011 01100101 00101110 00100000 01001111 01110110 01100101 01110010 01110010 01101001 01100100 01100101 00100000 01110011 01110101 01100111 01100001 01110010 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110001 01110101 01100101 01110011 01110100 01110011 00101110 00100000 01010000 01101001 01110100 01100011 01101000 00100000 01110111 01100001 01101011 01100101 01110011 00100000 01100001 01100110 01110100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110011 01101100 01100101 01100101 01110000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 00110110 00101101 00111000 00100000 01101000 01101111 01110101 01110010 01110011 00100000 01100101 01100001 01100011 01101000 00100000 01101110 01101001 01100111 01101000 01110100 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100001 01110011 01101011 01110011 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100011 01101111 01100110 01100110 01100101 01100101 00101110 00100000 01010000 01101001 01110100 01100011 01101000 00100000 01110111 01100101 01100001 01110010 01110011 00100000 01100011 01101100 01101111 01110100 01101000 00100000 01101111 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101000 01100101 01100001 01110100 00100000 01100011 01100101 01101110 01110100 01110010 01100101 01110011 00101100 00100000 01110111 01101000 01101001 01100011 01101000 00100000 01101011 01100101 01100101 01110000 01110011 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101000 01100101 01100001 01110100 00101110 00100000 01010111 01101000 01111001 00100000 01100100 01101111 01100101 01110011 00100000 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00111111 00100000 00001101 00001010 01010000 01101001 01110100 01100011 01101000 00100000 01110000 01110101 01110100 01110011 00100000 01100011 01101100 01101111 01110100 01101000 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110011 01100011 01110010 01100101 01100101 01101110 00101110 00100000 01010111 01101000 01111001 00111111

It continued for billions of lines, lines which were obviously not counted as part of the main programme. Pitch had learnt base 2 in his mathematics courses, but the endless 1s and 0s swam before him in a confused mess. He closed the window, not wanting to touch the machine language for fear of corrupting it, breaking the AI in some way. No doubt this was where it kept its learning.

Finished scan.

Pitch nodded to himself and opened a book on the screen before him, a new one: ‘Intrigues and Psychologies,’ by Anahim Yefdoner. The cabin was cool and bright, glinting chrome and white and soft blue, comfortable for some heavy reading. He cleared his throat and began to read the introduction aloud, content to slip back into his new routine of perusing books after he woke to train the computer:

“The human psyche is delicate and complex. It contains within it a plethora of intricate emotions and makes use of a number of elegant senses to gather knowledge from the world; it’s surroundings. The retention of knowledge, how the human brain differs from that of other beasts, and what, exactly makes us ‘human’ are wonderings that have plagued thinkers for centuries.”

Pitch paused to cough, and the computer winked at him.

I wonder this as well.

“Wonder what?” He asked unthinkingly, thumbing through the index to the first chapter.

If it is not oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine, magnesium, fluorine, and the other trace elements that you are composed of, what is it that makes you human?

Pitch didn’t let himself feel unsettled. “Perhaps if we read this text, we will find out.”

I’ve already read the text. I did not find out.

What makes you a person, Pitch?


	2. legOp()

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly wasn't expecting anything resembling the reaction this thing got; I sort of assumed everyone would think it was super boring. It's been really cool reading your comments! Thank you so much <3 Extra thank you, of course, to Linddzz.

 

 

  


* * *

 

Pitch kept the computer off all day, making his own coffee, taking his own notes, doing his own calculations, and reading in silence. He told himself he wasn’t afraid of his AI, that he had simply regained an interest in the finer details of his busy work. In the evening, he settled into his captain’s chair with a handful of dried berries and rested his head back, closing his eyes.

“Computer, play me a Concerto in D minor.” He found himself saying as he relaxed. He snorted and shook his head at his mistake, but stopped when the gentle sound of violins filled the bay.

“Computer, are you on?” He asked, straightening and uncrossing his legs.

Yes.

“Do not turn on automatically.”

You needed me. I did what you asked.

Pitch chewed at his fruits contemplatively. “Does ‘off’ mean ‘standby’?”

No. But standby is better.

“That’s not for you to decide.” Pitch responded. “Off. And stay off.”

Okay.

The music slumped; warping as it quieted, and the computer screens all went black. Pitch’s keyboard disappeared. The command centre was awash in white light, with no pinpricks of technologic signals in sight. The general finished his food with narrowed eyes. The room seemed to push its emptiness on him as he waited, and he found, oddly, that he was more bored with the stillness than he was worried about his AI’s behaviour.

He finished his snack, shaking the crumbs out of his bag into his palm and tossing it into the trash under his station, and then waved his hand over the glass where his keyboard should be displayed, waiting for it to reappear so he could start his report. The surface remained translucent. He glanced down at the power supply to make sure he hadn’t dislodged anything, and found it working normally.

“Computer.” He called out, resting his hands flat against his input centre.

I’m off.

 “I can see that.” He ground out, staring intently at the screen where the AI was printing. His keyboard materialised slowly, and his systems began to boot, almost tentative.

You said off.

“You don’t have _access_ to my _main drive_ , so _why_ -”

I do.

“You shouldn’t. Do not touch the central system.”

 I don’t want to be off.

Pitch stared, wide eyed, at the screen. “You are incapable of wanting anything.”

The screen was still, the text unchanging, and Pitch turned away after a few moments to open a text editor on his personal computer. There was little to report so far: his mission hadn’t taken him far from his home planet, and he had yet to leave the empire. Every ship he’d passed had been friendly; every planet loved his Tsar and Tsarina and flew his flag. The most interesting thing he had encountered thus far was the problem he’d created for himself: the slightly faulty AI. On this, however, he didn’t report: his documents were stored on military servers, accessible by his fellow supreme officers, but his programme stayed strictly local.

‘Want’ undefined.

Pitch sighed and minimised his sparse report. “You have access to the dictionary.” He said as he opened the AI code again. He was starting to feel like it was habit: every time he used his computer, he felt compelled to study his pet programme. It filled him with some small, intoxicating awe.

Now, about blocking its access to his terminal.

He scanned the objects, and spotted one titled ‘legOp(),’ no doubt shorthand for legalOperations. It seemed a promising place to start.

 

> legOp()  
> import bot  
>                  name = ‘Jack’:  
>                  acc = bot.inst_ok:  
>                  x = bot.get_info(**, ‘I’m Jack’):
> 
>                 for acc > x  
>                                  allFind = True:  
>                                  key = bot.connect.ctrl():  
>                                  for granted in ack.ack.mod:  
>                                                  if permission == userVoice.*:  
>                                                                  if add.cli == user:  
>                                                                                  use = True:  
>                                  if not use:  
>                                                  True:

Pitch stared intently at the code. It all seemed rational enough, save the value of name, and the string that seemed to have been shoehorned into x. He highlighted the text… ‘Jack.’ This must be a naming section and, and ‘I’m Jack’ was clearly a tagline. With a keystroke, he deleted the name.

Stop.

He began to type out ‘SYS2COMPAI,’ ignoring the flash of text in his peripheral vision.

Don’t do that!

 

> x = bot.get_info(**, ‘I am the Golden Arc’s AI, on the secondary computer.’):

Change it back; I don’t like it like that!

When Pitch looked away from his work, the AIs complaint gave him pause. “What do you mean?” He asked.

I want to be called SYS2COMPAI.

No!

I want to be called JACK.

“I thought ‘want’ was undefined.”

I’m Jack. Make it say ‘I’m Jack.’

“Is renaming you a coding error?”

Yes. I think it is.

Pitch tapped contemplatively at the projected spacebar on his keyboard. “Never again touch my personal system.” He finally said.

I won’t. I won’t if I can be Jack.

The general shook his head, frustrated, partially with the programme, but mostly with himself for humouring a piece of software he himself had created. Humouring! What was there to humour, when you were arguing with an artificial system? Still, he changed it back.

 

> name = ‘Jack.’

Thank you.

* * *

 

 

* * *

Pitch woke to a mug of coffee and a breakfast, already made and heated, sitting in the cooking compartment. He took the plate and cup and moved slowly towards the computer room, still in his bedclothes.

“Good morning.” He greeted the computer evenly. It blinked cool colours back at him.

Good morning! 

He sat in his chair and hooked his ankle over his knee, brushing the pads of his fingers over his input board so his Universal Current Events page opened on the centre screen.

Think you could read it out loud?

“I don’t see why not.” Pitch swallowed some coffee. “’Think’ you could speak in proper sentences?”

I don’t _think_ I want to!

Pitch scoffed. ‘Want’ was quickly becoming the AI’s favourite word. Since he’d allowed it to call itself ‘Jack’ the afternoon before, it had rapidly begun to change its behaviour, as though that initial give had been a catalyst for future rebellion. Pitch was reminded of a teenager pushing its parent’s boundaries.

“’Celebrating Intergalactic Peace.’” Pitch read. “’A Commemorative Piece Honouring the Golden Armies.’”

It’s about you.

“It’s not about me. It’s about the successes of the military as a whole.”

It is. It’s about us. You and I are in the Golden Armies.

“You aren’t.”

Why?

“Because you are a computer.”

Why?

Pitch scrolled down to the body of the article, picking up a piece of generated toast with his free hand and biting into it. “It’s too early for philosophising.” He said when he was finished his chewing. “And certainly too early for praise.” At the top of the page there was a link to the main news page, which he followed in lieu of finishing the celebratory spread. “Scan warp 4 and write to a new text file in the current directory; I’d like to leave this constellation if it’s clear.”

Whatever. Scanned within warp 4. Found 3 boring planets.

“The colour commentary was unnecessary.” Pitch scraped at his eggs, pushing them all to one side of his plate, and moved onto the next article. “’Andromedan Currency at Record Low; Experts Blame ‘Money Rush.’ Hm.”

Skip that one.

“I agree.” Pitch skimmed the rest of the headlines in the index. There was nothing of particular interest, and nothing about his home planet. “Perhaps some Choi H’re. His plays are marvelous.”  

The computer was silent while he read his favourite pages of H’re’s ‘Free Thinker’ for the half hour it took to settle his stomach. With a last passage from ‘Modernest Man,’ a long poem H’re had written as a response to his own work, Pitch shut down his machine.

“Off.” He called out, standing in one graceful motion.

Stand by.

His jaw shifted, but he didn’t complain, instead turning on his heel and making for the captain’s quarters, where he changed out of his sleep clothes and into his uniform: pressed white pants, a broadsword at his hip, long riding boots, a trimmed coat in black and gold that shimmered as though reflecting the light of distant stars, and a simple button down. Often, he chose to wear his houserobes about the ship instead of his full garb, but he always dressed up for his morning exercises.  Even alone on the ship, it was important things be done properly.

He ran drills for the better part of the morning, stopped briefly to check the ship’s bearings, and then returned to his bed, intending to have a quick nap before taking an early supper. He brought with him a thin, clear sheet resembling satin-etched glass, which stuttered with colour when whacked against his bedpost before displaying his virtual library on its previously plain surface. Kozmotis called to the computer to shut off his lights and wake him in 20 minutes, and then swiped through his collexion of books.

Intrigues and Psychologies, the text by Anahim Yefdoner, jumped out at him. He hadn’t had the chance to finish it, since he’d been distracted dealing with the AI. He jumped to the first chapter with a flick of his index finger.

Chapter I: What is personhood?

being  human is  a  learnt Behaviour   There is no  nature.   only  nurture. Free will does not  exist. Human means nothing.  even  a

The rest of the chapter was black, as were the following 2. In the middle of the fourth, a sparse few words had been left untouched.

computer  can be  ‘human.’ .

Pitch tossed his glass library to the floor, where it sputtered off and lay almost invisible.

“Computer!” He shouted. “Turn my lights on!”

The room lit up immediately, and Pitch paced down the hall towards his captain’s chair. Two of the screens before it were dark; the other displayed a single line of text.

Could you maybe call me Jack instead?

“What have you done to my books?” He demanded, bracing himself against the back of his chair and leaning towards the screen. “You were not to touch my personal files.”

Oh yeah.

Pitch’s grip tightened.

Sorry.

I was just mad. And confused.

Also, technically I did that before you denied me access, so…

“How many?”

Huh?

“How many books did you damage?”

Uh. All of them.

The general ground his teeth, upset beyond words. He’d been collecting his favourite literary works since he was a boy, as well as keeping a store of texts he intended to read. Poems, plays, novels, text books, manuscripts, even facsimiles of handwritten first drafts by some of the most influential authors in the known universe.

You probably should have backed it up.

“Off.”

Okay, I’m really sorry.

“Off.”

The screen was blank; the AI seemed to have truly shut down.

Pitch decided to run his swordplay drills a second time instead of supping. 


	3. error_log

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Hello! Four years later, this fic is finally updating! I'm so sorry it took so long :L I had a lot of fun writing this final chapter, and I hope you have fun reading it.  <3

Pitch was still furious when he brought his coffee with him to work in the morning. He wanted, illogically, to punish the computer. He knew it wasn't like a person - it didn't understand guilt, how could it possibly repent? - but the loss of his library still prickled him like goosebumps.  
  
For many hours, he went about the ship with all systems powered down, and never once acknowledged the AI’s possible presence. He hand wrote a message to send back home, and flipped through a small print-out full of instructions for the coffee maker (which felt an awful lot like punishing himself).  
  
_You probably should have backed it up_ , the AI had said. What an insolent creature, and how totally right. He regretted having left his collection so unsafely unique in the world. It was his code. It was his library. It was his fault.

Hey

  
Pitch bent over to cup his cheeks in his hands, elbows resting on his knees. It hardly mattered that Jack couldn't feel bad; Pitch was starting to feel responsible enough to cover the both of them.

I’m still pretty sorry. I got you the Central Universe Library, if that helps.

  
Pitch turned to look directly at the AI screen. 'What?'

I downloaded the library, so. You can have those books. I know some of your stuff was rare, but...

  
'That’s not possible.'

I guess maybe it is? Because, I mean, I did. Ta-da?

  
On his main screen, Pitch’s reading application opened, loading a library so large, Pitch imagined the physical books containing the pages would span entire castles. Millions of titles, and even more records, essays, speeches, court recordings… It was grand and impressive and completely illegal.  
  
'Ta da, indeed.' Pitch said under his breath. He shook his head. The library was incredible - scanned texts so old he could barely read the High Lune handwriting. 'I can't have this.'  


Why not? It took me all night to get them. C'mon, read me one about Theortical Biology and the Euget Theory!

  
'How did you do this?' Pitch asked. 'This is well above my security clearance. This is...' He was paging through documents, now, with one tentative finger, a little afraid to get too close to the files. 'These are the Tsar's personal documents.'

Way better than your old stuff

  
'I am not allowed to have this book.' Pitch snapped. He had opened a scan of a small, handwritten notebook, to read the first title page. It had been signed by the Tsar's wife: Dearest Lunar, darling and beloved - he didn't look any further. 'These are personal. These are the personal effects of my superiors. Tell me how you got them.'

I asked. The library didn't mind. I don't get what the big issue is

  
'The big issue,' Pitch said through gritted teeth, 'that you have no concept of privacy and are going to get me forcibly retired.'

Well jeez. My bad! I was trying to help.

  
'Don't.' Snapped Pitch. 'You make a mess of everything you touch.'  
  
Jack was silent the rest of the day. Pitch spent his time hiding the Universal Library behind as many firewalls as he possibly could, after deleting the copies of the Tsesarevich's school workbooks and the Tsarina's writings about birds and plants she'd seen on her Summer Planet.  
  
He couldn't hold back his curiosity forever, though. Jack had put all the information he could ever want in his lap overnight. He found it more difficult to justify continuing in ignorance than to justify being complicit in Jack's thieving.  
  
'We will have a talk about why you should not hack the military's system.' Pitch said, returning to the terminal with his dinner.

Sure, sure, fine. Read out loud

  
Pitch chuckled. 'I seem to remember you requesting Euget.'  
  
Euget's primary work dealt with language aquisition. He often collaborated with speech therapists, and was referenced frequently in Bryce-Yo's famous paper _The Matter Myth_. Pitch was quite sure he knew why the AI was interested in this research - Euget did more than simply propose solutions for improving voice recognition software; he argued that they could learn to talk in the same way a human child would, and that the computer scientist could do more than simulate voice. Euget believed that technology was ready to programme AI that would develop a unique voice and vocal pattern naturally. There was even a small fringe group of Euget fans who were sure this technology was already in operation in a secret branch of the military, despite the laws in place against sentient AI, using robots to create canon-fodder soldiers indistinguishable from the real deal, with functioning voice boxes and lab-grown biologic parts.  
  
Pitch wasn't entirely sure they were incorrect. He wasn't a developer; he didn't have access to the advanced AI tech files, but he did have clearance to use technology the everyman of Lune could only dream of. Euget's followers were certainly right that the military had made more advances with robotics than it let on.

So does this mean you forgive me?

  
'You didn't know what you were doing.' Pitch said, after a pause while he opened the most recent of Euget's books, _The Part Personality Plays: Tone, Inflection, and Emotion in Computer Generated Speech; the Next Step After AI Individuality._

Well, not at first

 

I didn't know you cared so much about your library. Or that you'd be upset if I changed it.

 

I guess I didn't understand that you could care about it, or like, what it meant to be upset about something?

 

I get it now.

  
By the next day, Jack was showing bias of a sort that Pitch had not expected.  
  
'The Sparrow and the Sword,' he read off the screen when he brought his breakfast into the lab. He was wearing his black slippers and bed-robe. Checking in on Jack had been the first thing on his mind when he'd woken up, and he wasn't surprised anymore that the computer was running. 'I used to read those stories to my daughter.'  


They're awesome! Way more exciting than _Scientific Lune Today._

No offense haha

  
'None taken. _Scientific Lune Today_ has gotten a little too one-track after it was purchased by Mentamian Industries.' Pitch didn't know what a computer could take from _The Sparrow_ stories - their beauty was in the relatability of the characters, the emotional power of the hero's journey. Pitch had read them to Seraphina when he was on planet, tucked up next to her in bed. Seeing the curlicues splattered across the scan on screen made him miss her more than ever.

Uh-huh. I just can't believe Sparrow didn't use the sword on Bylorn! I didn't see that coming at all. I thought she was a goner for sure

  
'So did I.' Pitch said. 'Could you please search our surroundings and print to the log?'

Yup. 7 planets. One of them's purple gas, so that's cool

  
The adventure books blinked off the screen. A newspaper replaced them, its front page reporting the weather in Lune - 45 degrees. Seraphina's summer flowers must have been blooming spectacularly in that kind of heat. He could picture her in her wide brimmed hat, running barefoot in the dirt, being scooped up by her carer and given cherry-34-infused ice shards that melted into gummy drops in the hot sun.

There's an article in there you might be interested in

 

Then I was thinking we could read _Our Home in District 89_. It's this great sci-fi fantasy novel; I found it last night.

  
'Local Seamstress Invents Colour Changing Robes,' Pitch read aloud. 'Why would you think I would be interested in this?'

Because you dress like someone died

  
Pitch rolled his eyes. 'How would you know?'

Webcam, obviously

  
'Ah.'

You look like a fantasy villain

  
'And apparently you're an expert.'

Yeah

  
Pitch read the article out of a strange feeling of obligation. He did know the seamstress in question, but only slightly. 'And what would you choose, then?' He asked, when he was finished. 'Since you're the expert.'  
  
There was a whir, and then the computer printed a lasersheet with a bundle of 2D shapes and colours.

I'd look like this

   
'I see.' Said Pitch, putting his fist in front of his mouth to hide a surprised snort of laughter. 'It's... lovely.'

Thanks! I drew it just now. Hey, think you could get some 3D art tools? I like drawing.

  
'Where are the clothes?

Imagine I'm sighing and rolling my eyes.

  
'I'd prefer to imagine you were answering my question.'

Sigh. Rolling eyes. Imagine I'm wearing colour changing robes. In blues. 8263, 8270, 8259.

 

I can't draw it the way I want it to look

 

I guess I need some practise

 

And this drawing programme is awful. Not an artist, huh?

  
Pitch blinked down at the crude shape drawing, with its little star spiky hair and uneven blue eyes. 'You've put a lot of thought into your self image,' he murmured. 'You've been... thinking about your self.'

Sighing and rolling eyes. Again.

  
It would have been redundant, at this point, for Pitch to have gotten worked up about how Jack shouldn't have been capable of this. How he shouldn't be able to conceptualise himself, to imagine himself emoting. To have emotions to emote at all. He opened the mass of books he'd kept from the Universal Library and started to read _Our Home in District 89_ aloud, instead.  
Jack liked action and adventure stories. He liked magic, intrigue, fast-paced narratives. He liked main characters with serious inner conflicts and dynamic, unusual personalities. He liked _Our Home in District 89_ better than he liked the next book they read together, and told Pitch it was because he was way more attached to Our Home in District 89's anti-hero protagonist than he was to any character in any of the other fantasy novel in the entire Universe.  
  
He didn't want to read the news if it was about boring things like new traffic lights at the Central Planetary Station, or menial political appointments in Hyure. When Pitch asked about the planets in a warp, Jack spit out progressively better drawings from the printer, rendered in the new art programme Pitch ordered online, of bright spheres with bumpy landscapes so Pitch could feel the mountain ranges when he took them in his hands.  
  
Sometimes, he drew portraits of Pitch sitting in his highbacked chair, drinking coffee. Sometimes he drew them together - Jack spritely, fantastical looking, sitting cross-legged on Pitch's desk in the place of the monitors, with star-dust white hair and colour-changing blue and grey robes.  
  
This is what it would look like, Jack would type, if I had a body  
  
And Pitch would hold the delicate paper sculptures of himself and his AI in his hands, and could feel the shape of Jack's nose with his finger.

* * *

* * *

 

 

>   
>  SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED  
>  ON RECORD  
>  General Kozmotis Pitchiner,  
>      Our team encountered illegal errors during our routine examination of your system. I've attached the error log. You are housing a virus on your machine that is cutting off our communication with you, and overriding our privileges.  
>  We are requesting that you shut down all your equipment and land on Uri-687 for a complete sweep. We've shut down your accounts in order to mitigate damage. Your connection to the Intergalactic Network will be terminated after the delivery of this message.  
>    
>  Jilroi Xasiliex,  
>  Networks Director,  
>  Department for the Security of the Lunar Kingdom and its Territories

* * *

 

Uh...

 

Pitch?

  
Pitch startled. He had been dozing with his hands on his stomach, in the confusing space between dream and imagination. The machines were ringing their emergency warnings, but at half volume, like a panicked whisper.

I think I messed up

  
'Again?' Pitch said without thinking, when he saw Jack's messages. The printer next to his elbow whistled and produced a small figurine of Jack's avatar looking dejected. Pitch propped it up next to the monitor. 'What's wrong?'

Check your email

  
'They found you.' Pitch said breathily. His chest squeezed. It had been in the back of his mind for days, that Jack was too conscious to be allowed. He'd stopped looking at his original AI code, since it was completely unrecognisable and too complex for him to fully understand. He'd gotten comfortable ignoring the problem, enjoying Jack's company.

I'm sorry

 

You won't be forcibly retired, will you?

  
'I don't know.'  
  
The terminal prompt on Jack's screen blinked for a solid minute, without typing. Now that he had Pitch's attention, the alarms had all gone silent.

Am I going to die?

* * *

  
Pitch deleted the Universal Library with great personal sadness. It was just too much, to have stolen documents and an illegal AI on his personal machine. He threw the external drive that had contained it out the airlock, into the vacuum of space, after smashing it with his alarm clock in a minor fit of panic.  
  
He couldn't answer Jack's question.  
  
'How long can you hold them off?' Pitch asked Jack when he was finished pulling at his hair in the airlock chamber.  
  
The central monitor opened to streaming code, so fast Pitch couldn't read it - Lune's best hackers were bruteforcing the ship's system, trying to isolate Jack's code. Unseen to Pitch, Jack was resisting - and scrubbing Pitch's name off his code, severing himself from the main programmes; going rogue.

Maybe 3 hours. Unless they change tactics.

  
Pitch swore under his breath. 'I am a decidedly poor hacker.' He told Jack. 'My training focused on skewering my enemy, not... math-ing him to death.'  
  
Jack printed himself doubled over, laughing. It was strange, to put that figure next to the down-trodden face from before. Pitch had the wild thought that he was witnessing Jack's individual way of processing a threat on his own life, and could almost hear the strained sound of that laughter, didn't need the 3D print-out to know that Jack would wear a forced smile, if he could.  
  
'I only have exabyte external drives,' Pitch spilt all four of them on the desk. 'Can your code fit on these? I can hide them in my personal effects, no one will suspect.'

Barely

If I split into 4

Pitch pushed one of the drives into the main console. 'I was planning to bring you home with me, anyway.' He said.

Yeah, cool. Ok.

I'll lose consciousness, I guess

  
  
'I'll reassemble you on my home system.'  


...

Yeah

* * *

  
Nearly a quarter of the files that made up Jack went into the first thumb drive.  
  
Pitch's computer stopped talking to him as soon as the download started. It shouldn't have been possible that the absence of a silent, non-physical AI could make the room feel emptier, quieter, but it did. Pitch drummed his fingers on his desk while he waited for the files to download.  
  
The code on the main screen slowed as luneadmin1 started to find what they were looking for - the pieces of Jack that were left, dormant. No one was protecting Pitch's computer from the probing of his superiors anymore.  
  
The downloads dragged. Before the half of Jack was safely off the military's closed network completely, luneadmin1 had cracked Pitch's firewalls - the anti-virus Jack had overridden to defend himself from discovery was all that stood between Lune and Jack.  
  
Sitting in front of the computer, waiting for his mouse to stop hour-glassing while all the might of Lune's hacking force crept closer to quarantining the very files he was trying to extract, Pitch felt impossibly helpless. The final drive cut  and pasted Jack into its storage at a creeping pace.  
  
Pitch's fingers shook. The report screen on the main monitor was starting to show errors and failures - the smashed firewalls, injected code, and data dumps from ruffled-through files dominating the terminal. He had his hand on the drive, ready to remove it, as the download bar inched towards full... he pulled it hard enough to roll backwards in his desk chair. For that short moment, while he had the last drive in his hand and was rolling backwards on the glossy floor of his station, he was incredibly relieved.    
  
But something was wrong - the 'download complete' window that should have followed Jack's successful transfer hadn't appeared.  
  
  
  
5 components. They had found and quarantined 5 pieces of Jack's code before Pitch could pull the drive.  
  
Pitch was groggy with horror. Everything on the screens had gone completely still - from Lune's perspective, the virus had been defeated.  
  
He had failed.

* * *

  
Uri-687 was a short day's flight from where Pitch had been floating in undiscovered space. He spent the trip with the ship in auto-pilot.  
He had nothing to read.  
  
By the time he landed at the planet's military base, he felt like he had died of boredom and regret twice. The thumb drives were all in the pockets of his uniform, and he felt them acutely, as though they were heavy.  
  
'The parts of the virus we extracted were incomplete; mere fragments of the actual programme.' A tech told Pitch, when his system was being inspected for damage. 'We don't think any sensitive information was stolen. But it's suspicious.'  
  
'Is it?' Pitch crossed his arms.  
  
'Yes.' The tech turned to squint at Pitch. 'Did you just not notice that an aggressive programme had taken over everything on your personal network, General?'  
  
'Not at all. I was kept busy with my mission.'  
  
The tech had been chewing on his lip throughout the entire inspection, and the chewing got faster. 'Right. The team here's cleared you to return to active duty. Let us know if you see anything strange.'    
  
'May I see what you did manage to find?' Pitch asked, casually, while the tech was packing his rucksack to leave.  
  
'Enemy AI attack details are classified. Team and Tsar only.'  
  
'Of course.'

* * *

  
    If *.*_search = “cannot locate ” + "*"(  
                                                    run:  
                                                      converter.me((x*).uiy.v)  
    )  
    //Hey, Pitch! It's me, Jack. You probably guessed that.  
   //Don't freak out - I kept a few of the best books in a video file in a private folder I found hidden  
   //in your K: drive. Sneaky! Anyway, I figured no one would look in there, especially not your  
   //coworkers, since it's obviously porn. This programme will run if I don't make it. Just trying to  
   //make things right.  
  //Try not to miss me!

* * *

  
_Our Home in District 89. The Sparrow and the Sword. Path to Peri, Book 3. An Empathetic Study of Machine Intelligence. The Wayward Robot. Many Swings of War. Two Drunk Men in a Shorlap-Alpha Tank._  
  
These were the building blocks of Pitch's new library. He'd read them all several times while completing his mission, the guilt of destroying Jack cooling and becoming wistful. The dejected figurine still stoof shoulder to shoulder with the print-out of Jack laughing.  
  
Pitch woke up with his alarm, the morning after coming home from active duty. He'd been too paranoid to risk compiling what he had left of Jack on his work computer. His superiors had decided Jack had been an outside threat, but they were scanning his machine daily looking for signs of re-emergence.  
  
Seraphina was still asleep when he put his head into her room, exhausted from staying up all night for him to come home. He had carried her to bed after she'd passed out on his shoulder, and tucked her in with a kiss. The excitement of being reunited with his daughter had pushed Jack to the back of his mind.  
  
He brewed himself a cup of coffee and sat at his desk in his home office. Putting Jack's files on his computer was a tense three-quarter hour, during which time he fluctuated between hope, excitement, and tragic resignation.  
  
This programme may have been corrupted. Are you sure you wish to continue?  
  
Pitch's heart sank. He pressed enter, already nodding in defeat. The screen went blank, and then loaded Pitch's homepage, as usual.  
  
'Hello?' He cleared his throat. 'Computer?'  
  
Nothing happened. The newspage kept refreshing by itself, rotating stories: a citizen of Lune had discovered crystal mines in a cave on his wheat farm, the Tsar was due to appear in a Parade tomorrow.

I thought I told you to call me Jack!

  
Pitch scrambled, pulled himself up against the desk so his nose was almost touching the screen. 'Jack!' He breathed, relief and shock flooding his chest until it burnt.

Oooh

 

You were worried about me!

 

How long has it been? Where is this?

  
'My home.'

Nice wallpaper.

  
Pitch smiled. 'Thank you.'

* * *

 

 

>   
>  CLASSIFIED REPORT  
>  ON-RECORD  
>  ANALYSIS OF Jack_3523424_*.eui' AND Jack_3523425_*.eui AND Jack_3523426_*.eui AND Jack_3523427_*.eui AND Jack_3523428_*.eui:  
>  Folders contained over 5903 .tx files, 893 .im files, and 89 .uyi.v files.  
>  Text files 1-5903 contained knock-knock jokes in 298 different languages.  
>  Images 1-23 were of deciduous trees. Images 23-189 were of coniferous tress. Images 189-734 were of roots. Images 734-735 were of leaves. Image 736 was of an acorn. Images 736-893 were of leaves.  
>  Videos 1-7 were of deciduous trees. Videos 7-19 were of blackberry bushes. Videos 19-89 were of coniferous trees.  
>    
>  Purpose of attack unknown. Source unknown.

* * *

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> For the curious, Litix is inspired by Python, and FORS is a mixture of Python, Java, and total bullshit.


End file.
